In current magnetic recording media, growth in areal density has been accomplished by the reduction of grain size of the magnetic recording films while maintaining similar numbers of grains per bit, which is needed to fulfill signal to noise ratio (SNR) requirements. However, continued scaling down of the grain size will lead to thermal instability, which is generally referred to as the superparamagnetic limit.
One approach to circumvent the supermagnetic limit would be to pattern the media into isolated magnetic bits that behave as single magnetic entities, rather than hundreds of weakly coupled grains. It would be desirable, for ultra-high density magnetic recording, to pattern the magnetic media into de-coupled magnetic islands surrounded by non-magnetic material.
The present invention has been developed in view of the foregoing.